Archive for Matt Murphy

It’s fair to say that when it comes to product innovation, engineering has outpaced marketing. Over the last decade, technical innovation has accelerated dramatically, delivering new capabilities that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, particularly in the mobile communications space. But while some consumers still camp out in front of stores to get their hands on the latest smartphone or tablet and others take pride in being the first in their group to download a new operating system, only a small subset of total consumers actually usea fraction of their new device’s capabilities.
That’s not because consumers and businesses don’t want to use innovative new features: It’s because they don’t know how to use them, and any attempt to address this knowledge gap will have to involve a significant change in consumer behavior. It’s not a failure of engineering – it’s a failure of marketing and education, and it must be addressed. The knowledge gap has profound implications for brands because consumers don’t value features they don’t use. Brands that find ways to elevate product feature adoption can find unprecedented stickiness by helping consumers see the value the brands are already delivering. They can also support continued innovation... Read more

Until recently, large national advertising agencies had an almost insurmountable advantage over their mid-sized and smaller counterparts thanks to economies of scale in large-scale media buying. Expanding companies that were looking to increase market share turned to big advertising agencies because they could access large-scale media buys more affordably. This was the prevalent trend in advertising for decades. Under that model, a company that started small might use local advertising agencies to craft and manage campaigns for their regional outreach, but as the organization grew and set its sights on a national audience, it would typically form relationships with larger advertisers to achieve broader reach.
The proliferation of data generated by online activities at home, at work and on the go has given rise to a new trend in advertising: hyper-localization. With hundreds of millions of consumers now using home or work-based desktops and laptops as well as mobile devices to access the web, advertisers can now reach people anytime, anywhere. And thanks to apps that deliver reviews and other information on local goods and services, consumers are increasingly likely to voluntarily share their location information to receive relevant, targeted information.
But not every company has been able to leverage this valuable... Read more